Progress report on civilian disarmament in Jonglei

19 Mar 2012

Progress report on civilian disarmament in Jonglei

18 March 2012 – In an interview, Jonglei Governor Kuol Manyang Juuk gave an upbeat assessment of the civilian disarmament campaign in his state after it was officially launched by President Salva Kiir Mayarditlast week.

Question: How is the civilian disarmament process proceeding?

Governor Manyang: The disarmament process is going well. We have collected a good number of guns and there is no resistance from anybody so far because people have been actually demanding the government to disarm the civil population for a quite long time.

But of course, there are some people who are not ready to hand over their guns. These people are seeing their guns as a source of income for them. So, they will not willing to just give up.

But when we deploy the army as a show of force in case anybody does want to resist, the army can collect (the arms).

Question: In some places people are asking for security in return for handing over their guns. Are you ready to provide enough security to the community? And what will become of the arms themselves?

Governor Manyang: Yes, we are organizing police forces and of course we have a lot of security forces without arms. The arms collected from the civilian population will be used for arming the police, prison forces, service forces and wildlife forces and they will be redeployed to all the payams and counties.

So people at the level of payams and bomas will have a force that will provide protection to them.

Question: Are you facing any challenges thus far?

Governor Manyang: Up to now there is no challenge. There are some people who run away to hide themselves and even leave their cows behind with their family, children and women.

We are still appealing to them to hand over their guns. We have asked members of the parliament from Jonglei State as well the national legislative assembly to go back to their constituencies and appeal to their people to give up their guns. I believe we will succeed in this mission.

Question: For how long will this exercise take place?

Governor Manyang: This process will continue until we feel that the arms are not a threat to the population. Of course, we do not know whether everybody will hand over the guns.

Some of them may keep the guns or may have hidden their guns, (but) provided that they are not using them against people, then the time will come when they are convinced to hand over their guns.

The army will remain in the area to provide protection to the people, receive their guns and disarm the population until we all convinced that there is no threat any more.

Question: What is the role of UNMISS in this exercise?

Governor Manyang: UNMISS is giving us assistance in terms of transportation. We are able now to use the UNMISS planes and helicopters to go and visit the people in the localities and observe the process.

This is a very good support that we are getting from UNMISS.

Question: Some people fear that the army might violate the rights of the people in the process of collecting these guns. How disciplined are the security forces who are taking part in this campaign?

Governor Manyang: So far the army is doing well and there has been no incident. Two days ago, there was an incident in Pibor town when a drunken paramilitary policeman shot two people. One person died and the other person was wounded and is in a hospital. This is an isolated incident that happened under the influence of alcohol.

There were also some minor incidents in the area whereby some soldiers (ignored) orders and beat some people. This was reported, and they are being handled by the commanders on the ground.